Trent Briney, who was fourth in the 2004 U.S. Olympic Men's Marathon Trials in 2:12:35, will represent the U.S. in the marathon at the World Championships in Helsinki, Finland in August. Briney will be joined on the American squad by his Michigan-based Hansons-Brooks Distance Project teammates Brian Sell and Clint Verran, along with Peter Gilmore and Scott Larson. Briney, 26, attended the University of Colorado- Colorado Springs, where he was a 2001 NCAA Division II runner-up in the 10,000. Last fall, he ran 2:22:52 for 23rd place at the LaSalle Bank Chicago Marathon. In 2005, he was seventh in the 10,000 at the Stanford Invitational in March and seventh at the Shamrock Shuffle 8K in Chicago in April in 23:51. On June 11, he and Sell and Verran ran the Steamboat 15K in Peoria, Illinois as a hard workout and finished together in 50:19; Sell was given the win and Briney was awarded second place. Briney is one of the Road Runners Club of America 2005 "Roads Scholars," earning a $5,000 stipend.

Runner's World Daily: Not everyone who earns a marathon bid to the World Championships accepts it, but all three Hansons guys who were invited are going. Did you arrive at these decisions individually, or was there an understanding in talking with Keith and Kevin Hanson that this was something the team wanted to do, and having all three go in solidarity would be a great tribute to the program?Trent Briney:Keith and Kevin are always behind the idea of representing the U.S., and I know that Clint and Brian and I all feel strongly about that idea. All of us wanted to go, to get that opportunity to go to the World Championships and get that level of competition so that we can be more aggressive with the Americans. How do you learn to be better there? Well, you race better people. It's always an honor to represent the U.S. I've never traveled overseas, so I'm like "woo, this is exciting." I'm smiling every time I even think of putting on the uniform.

RWD: You're going to a good place for your first European trip. Finland's one of the few places that probably won't be sweltering.TB:Yeah. I've been doing some research on the area. It looks pretty cool.

RWD: When you missed the Olympic team by one spot, you must have known that the criteria for picking the Worlds team would include the Trials lists of finishers. You've been aware for quite some time that the selection might come to you, right?TB:Basically, I knew right after the race at the Trials. Clint came up to me and said "you just made the team for the 2005 Worlds." And I was like "what are you talking about?" I said "that sounds great." I have been waiting. Obviously, I didn't think after it last summer. I was just trying to be ready (as the Olympic alternate). Then I tried to focus on Chicago. Ever since I ran Chicago, it (the World Championships) has been in the back of my head. It was why I ran a track season this year. I expected to run a marathon in August, and I wanted to get some speed under my belt prior than that.

RWD: What did you do on the track this spring? We did notice your 28:44 in the 10,000 at Stanford.TB: I was trying to get PR in the 10k and the 5k. The 10k PR worked out, 28:44. I tried some in the 5k. I ran a couple in the low 14s. I went to MtSAC. I'd been battling a little bit of Achilles tendinitis in my training, so I wasn't hitting on all cylinders. I just had a day when it wasn't my day, unfortunately. But it was nice to get to go to the meet. I've never been to MtSAC, so I'll take any experience so hopefully, for future opportunity, I can make good on it. I mean, I got to run with Bernard Lagat low 13s. He was coming up on my heels (laughs), unfortunately, on the last lap. It was crazy to be on the line with everybody who'd raced in the Olympic Trials in the 5k.

RWD: Would you say that for these nearly two months before the Worlds, you and Clint and Brian are on the same schedule? We know Brian has been racing often, and quite well.TB: Yeah, we're definitely doing the same training and that sort of thing. Training is a little bit different, depending on the person. Our pace in some of the workouts will be different. For myself, this last week or two, I've had a little bit easier workouts than Brian or Clint, and even Clint's had a little bit slower than Brian for parts of it. They're trying to adjust for what our bodies have handled previously and what is shown to work for each of us.

RWD: Do you think, in general, that you have the leg speed that those two guys have?TB: I definitely think so. One of my big things for the future is working on developing my road racing, to get in there where Brian has raced, to become a really more aggressive road race, to become more confident with that. That's something I want to focus on here in the next year or two.

RWD: In the Steamboat 15K, the three of you finished together. That wasn't an optimal effort, was it?TB:No, it was not. It was supposed to be a tempo run type effort. I believe that was the end of my first week of training. I've been coming back from fighting some Achilles issues this spring. Being on the track, doing all these track workouts, will get you. I've been a little hampered by that. I took a couple of days off prior to this training segment, so I was only about a week in. So I was kind of holding the other two characters up at that point, but I'm catching them day by day now. I'm getting the Achilles worked on every day. The intensity and my mileage is going up right now, and the pain in my Achilles is going down. There's really no pain right now, just a little tightness in my calf. I'm happy with it.I finished my run yesterday (he was interviewed on June 24) and said "this is gonna be good." I ran 12 in the morning and came back for an easy afternoon run. But I was like "let's push it a little bit," and started being aggressive on the hills because there are going to be some hills on the marathon course over there (in Helsinki). I want to make sure I'm ready for that, to stay with the pack and handle my fitness well over there. So I just felt really extremely good and said "okay, this Achilles thing is not an issue anymore."

RWD: Will the three of you all stay in Michigan to train for the summer?TB: Definitely. We'll be here through the beginning of August when we fly over there. I don't think we'd have it any other way. Being in a little warmer temperature (like in Michigan) is always better than being a little colder. I guess it's supposed to be maybe in the 70s for our race temperature. We had the Marathon Distance Summit in Rochester (Michigan). Dr. David Martin was out here, and some other people were as well. They were giving us information to prepare to race, really, really well in the marathon. They had done one of these last year prior to the Olympic games, the one where Meb and Deena were at in San Diego. With that success, they wanted to do another one. They said "okay, this is average temperature (in Helsinki in August) in the last 15 years. This is what you can expect. It's going to be feel warm, in the 70s." for those of us in Michigan, that's going to be great. They told us about hydration and what we do have to do so sunburn doesn't become a factor, and many other things. The men's and women's marathon teams (all ten runners) were here in Rochester.

RWD: Had you met Peter Gilmore and Scott Larson (the other two men on the U.S. marathon squad) before?TB: I know Peter pretty well. It was nice to get to know Scott Larson a little bit, and learn about the young kid that he's got. It was fun to play some horseshoes, and be around and have a meal and get to know each other so when we get over there it'll be like "hey, how you doing?"One thing I'm working hard on is managing pressure, sometimes from outside factors. I've been working on it with books and things like that. I work with a sports psychologist that's been helping me to look at it in a better way and have my mindset a lot better.

RWD: Speaking of that, you've mentioned that one of your sources of inspiration is the final pre-game speech in Oliver Stone's football movie, "Any Given Sunday." What was in that that stuck with you?TB:A friend of mine who's training for judo on the world level played that for me. Al Pacino is the coach and goes into how when we get into the game, we want somebody who's going to fight for that inch. He's going to fight and scrape and crawl for that inch--just that feeling of fighting for improvement, fighting for a little something more. And just the way it's said in that movie, I took to it, and I shared it with somebody who helps to motivate me in the sport. This is how I feel about things--can I do better? Especially in training, attacking the day to day training. Am I willing to get up extra early, am I willing to do those extra things that are those little inches?

RWD: Besides the actual running, what constitutes your life as an athlete? Do you get massage often and get other forms of physical therapy?TB: I have a really good chiropractor who specializes in sports, Dr. Ornby--a father and son, Roy and Kyle Ornby. They're really done a lot of great things for people here in (greater) Detroit. They've just been awesome, They help with everything from plantar fasciitis to what I'm working on right now, Achilles tendonitis. I went in there like "I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this" and they're like "give me a week." And a week later, I'm heading in the right direction. And now it's been two or three weeks and I feel really good about it. I want 100 percent range of motion, and my doctor said "I don't care if the pain is gone, we're going to work this every day until Helisnki." I'm like "sounds great, let's go!"

And I get a massage, once a week or once every other week. We have a massage guy we recommend from the stores (Hansons Running Shops). He's been really beneficial. Just the amount of knowledge some of these people have with the body and the muscles, they help really well with recovery. And I've been working with the sports psychologist since January. That's been going really well. It's like having an extra coach. He comes up with unique ideas that coaches might not have thought of--visualization, and just positive things that you don't really recognize are positive, and you start adding them in there. A lot of runners have the pressure of "what am I going to do when I'm done running?" At points, I've been a little stressed about that. So I've been learning how to deal with that. I'm working on my diet, trying to get my carbs and my protein for recovery and for fuel, and cutting out things that are empty fuel. At the Marathon Summit, we learned after the timing of getting your food, like how 150 to 200 calories the morning before a workout can affect the sugar that's going through your brain and keeping your brain stimulated while you're putting out your effort. Little tricks like that, little things that make the training go a little bit better, and day by day, you feel a little bit better.

RWD: Do you have any races set up before Helsinki?TB: There's not this year. We've done half-marathons a lot of times before previous marathons, and I think we're going to do this one without doing that half-marathon and just let our training give us the confidence instead of a race, knowing that we're training with two other guys who are really solid. I think it's going to work out good, because sometimes you take a five-day break to get out of town and only one out of the five days, the race, is really solid. I think we're going to stick with the nitty gritty of training and keep making sure that that goes great. My mileage is going to get up to 130, 135 a week. Clint and Brian should be a little higher than that. I've been coming off a track season, and hadn't had my mileage above the 90s for awhile. And Brian's been above 120 or more for a long segment. You don't want to jump too high after you've been low.

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